Agile/Lean/Scrum DOES NOT MEAN that we do not have any planning. The Product Owners and Stakeholders in the organization that sponsor your efforts will need some information on which to plan their investment.

Our Program Planning / Release Planning Workshop takes your team from the classroom into 2 days of intensive program planning with the outcome resulting in your initial AGILE RELEASE PLAN.

Pre-Workshop
The team will have had previous Agile Training including user story writing and Product Backlog refinement.

Audience
Anyone involved in the release being planned should attend, including all team members, Product Owners, and Scrum Masters, as well as stakeholders and
leadership that have a vested interest in the effort.

Topics

  • Socializing and updating the product vision and product roadmap
  • Prioritizing the constraints (date, scope, resources)
  • Agree on and document the Definition of Done for the iterations and the release
  • Review acceptance criteria for user stories
  • Refining user story estimates
  • Decide on iteration cadence
  • Review the implications of potential release dates
  • Creating the Version — the subset of Product Backlog Items (PBIs) to be completed in the next release
  • Reviewing user stories and estimating their size
  • Understand user story dependencies
  • Prioritizing Product Backlogs
  • Presenting the backlog to the whole team

Coaching Schedule

PRE-ENGAGEMENT
Our Agile coaches work with your Product Owner and Scrum Master to create your Product Backlog for an actual project. If your team has already created a Product Backlog, we will review it with your team to make sure that the User Stories are of a reasonable size to be completed in one sprint. Finally, we draft and agree on an engagement schedule that works for you and your team.
DAY ONE

  • Kick-off the session with introductions & ice-breakers
  • Review the Workshop Goals
  • Discuss the Program Vision
  • Feature Release Strategy
  • User Personas/roles
  • Discuss the Minimum Viable Feature/Increment
  • Review/Update Definition of Done
  • Review Existing Epics/Features
  • Wrap-up & Retrospective for Day 1

DAY TWO

  • Recap from Day 1 and Revisit Workshop Goals
  • Story Sequencing Strategy
  • Minimum Viable Feature Review
  • Feature/User Story Mapping (existing Product Backlog)
  • New User Story Writing to fill gaps
  • Create/Review Acceptance Criteria
  • Agree on T-Shirt Sizing Scale
  • Size Epics & Stories
  • Itemize Risks
  • Wrap up: List Open Issues
  • Retrospective
  • Q&A

END OF WORK
Our coaches provide recommendations and next steps towards communicating the release plan making sure to emphasis the empirical approach that it is based upon. As the Scrum Teams move forward, they will inspect and adapt and the plan will change as the team continues its progress.

Next Steps

If you’re ready for more information, please contact us below.